Advisory panel for Frederick County Public Schools urges clearer consent, abuse and tech-safety lessons in health curriculum

At a meeting of an advisory panel for Frederick County Public Schools, parents, teachers and staff recommended strengthening middle- and high-school health indicators to give students explicit, practice-oriented instruction on consent, sexual abuse and online safety.

Panel members said many indicators use passive language such as "identify" and asked the curriculum writers to swap in stronger verbs ("apply," "analyze," "demonstrate") and to add concrete activities so students learn how to respond when someone says "no." Raven Jones, a parent from the Walkersville feeder area, said, "I feel like boundaries and consent should have more," and other participants urged lessons that let students practice refusal skills and respectful responses to rejection.

A staff member noted that the district treats "family" as defined by the student and asked that definition be re-shared with teachers so it is consistently applied. The same staff member told the panel that instruction on sexual abuse and assault is required by state law for PreK–12 and is therefore placed in the safety and injury-prevention unit because parents may opt out of family-life and human-sexuality units but cannot opt out of safety curricula. "Parents can opt out of family life and human sexuality. They cannot opt out of safety and injury prevention," the staff member said.

Participants also pressed for clearer links between the health curriculum and digital-safety instruction. Several speakers raised concerns about AI-enabled image manipulation and so-called "deepfakes," reposting of private images and other technology-related harms. One participant urged that indicators about online posting and digital dignity be included in the online-safety unit so those lessons are not subject to parental opt-out.

Teachers and student representatives asked that some content now placed in later grades be introduced earlier or repeated in later years. "There are ways to build from identifying to applying — start earlier and scaffold," said Asher Karens, a senior at Governor Thomas Johnson High School, during the discussion about when to teach different skills.

The panel also discussed reproductive-health materials and community resources. Members asked that lists of local services be paired with instruction on how to evaluate and use resources (for example, distinguishing trusted providers from unverified online sources) and requested an explicit indicator for reporting abuse and accessing support for gender-diverse and underserved populations.

Votes at a glance: The panel voted to approve two sets of minutes. The December minutes were moved, seconded and approved (tally not recorded in the transcript). The February minutes were approved after a separate motion; the recorder noted two opposed votes but did not record which members opposed.

The advisory panel will forward its compiled feedback to curriculum-writing teams; facilitators said teachers will use the comments as they develop implementation plans over the summer and next school year. The meeting closed after the panel completed its reviews and recorded a motion to adjourn.